editorNPR Digital Services RSS Generator 0.94David Bianculli is a guest host and TV critic on NPR's Fresh Air with Terry Gross. A contributor to the show since its inception, he has been a TV critic since 1975. From 1993 to 2007, Bianculli was a TV critic for the New York Daily News. Bianculli has written four books: The Platinum Age Of Television: From I Love Lucy to The Walking Dead, How TV Became Terrific (2016); Dangerously Funny: The Uncensored Story of 'The Smothers Brothers Comedy Hour (Simon & Schuster/Touchstone, 2009); Teleliteracy: Taking Television Seriously (1992); and Dictionary of Teleliteracy ( 1996) . An associate professor of TV and film at Rowan University in New Jersey, Bianculli is also the founder and editor of the online magazine, TVWorthWatching.com .NPR Digital Services RSS Generator 0.94David BianculliFri, 18 Aug 2017 03:35:40 +0000David Biancullihttp://kvpr.org
David BianculliThe villains in comic books usually have grandiose master plans, like targeting and defeating an enemy or ruling the world. Netflix, as it's grown to become more and more of a major player in the modern TV universe, has grand plans of its own. Netflix started out, and took root and blossomed, by providing easy access to many of the movies and TV shows made by others. Then it began making its own TV series and movies. As those programs have succeeded wildly (starting with House of Cards ) Netflix has gone all in on the original production front, to the point where it's now carpet-bombing Netflix subscribers with several new offerings a week. Meanwhile, other entertainment companies, such as CBS and Disney, are getting into the streaming business with their own services, and beginning to withhold their product from Netflix and other distributors. That's why original programs are so important to the future of Netflix, Amazon, Hulu and other such companies. It's also why Netflix, mostIn 'Defenders,' Netflix Enlists Marvel Superheroes In Quest For TV Dominationhttp://kvpr.org/post/defenders-netflix-enlists-marvel-superheroes-quest-tv-domination
80908 as http://kvpr.orgWed, 16 Aug 2017 18:20:00 +0000In 'Defenders,' Netflix Enlists Marvel Superheroes In Quest For TV DominationDavid BianculliTV Adaptation Of Stephen King's 'Mr. Mercedes' Is An Engaging Cat-And-Mouse Thrillerhttp://kvpr.org/post/tv-adaptation-stephen-kings-mr-mercedes-engaging-cat-and-mouse-thriller
80596 as http://kvpr.orgTue, 08 Aug 2017 20:38:00 +0000TV Adaptation Of Stephen King's 'Mr. Mercedes' Is An Engaging Cat-And-Mouse ThrillerDavid BianculliCopyright 2017 Fresh Air. To see more, visit Fresh Air . TERRY GROSS, HOST: This is FRESH AIR. Our TV critic David Bianculli thought that TV basically took a summer vacation this July. But he says this month, TV's back with three unusual and distinctive new series - a miniseries, a sketch comedy series and a new type of anthology show. DAVID BIANCULLI, BYLINE: The first of these new series is a fact-based drama about the long hunt for the Unabomber. It's called "Manhunt: Unabomber" and stars Sam Worthington as the young FBI profiler who's on his trail and Paul Bettany as the killer he's chasing, Ted Kaczynski. This eight-part miniseries begins tonight on the Discovery Channel, which has never before presented a major scripted drama. So you'd be excused for not expecting much. Yet, "Manhunt" is an all-out winner. It draws great tension and frustration out of the bureaucracy of this particular federal bureau and takes the time to detail the Unabomber's motives as well as his methods.3 Distinctive New Series Are Worth Checking Out This Augusthttp://kvpr.org/post/3-distinctive-new-series-are-worth-checking-out-august
80327 as http://kvpr.orgTue, 01 Aug 2017 18:18:00 +00003 Distinctive New Series Are Worth Checking Out This AugustDavid BianculliCopyright 2017 Fresh Air. To see more, visit Fresh Air . TERRY GROSS, HOST: This is FRESH AIR. Our TV critic David Bianculli has reviews of two TV series premiering this week. Both of them are period pieces, one set in the 1970s, the other in the 1980s. And both are created by and starring women. But past that, the two new shows have little in common except that David likes them both. DAVID BIANCULLI, BYLINE: One new show premiering this week on Sunday on the PBS Masterpiece series actually is a miniseries and a prequel. It's also the starting point for a possible series of mystery stories featuring the same character. Beginning in 1991, Helen Mirren starred as police detective Jane Tennison in a series of British mysteries called "Prime Suspect" based on novels written by Lynda La Plante and imported by PBS. Mirren was wonderful. These were the performances more than anything else that made her Helen Mirren. And so were the mysteries, which were about much more than the crime she'GLOW' And 'Prime Suspect': Two TV Series You Won't Want To Misshttp://kvpr.org/post/glow-and-prime-suspect-two-tv-series-you-wont-want-miss
78814 as http://kvpr.orgThu, 22 Jun 2017 17:14:00 +0000'GLOW' And 'Prime Suspect': Two TV Series You Won't Want To MissDavid BianculliThe original Twin Peaks series really was original — one of the most inventive, unprecedented, sometimes thrillingly unique TV series ever presented. David Lynch directed several episodes, including the very best ones: the mood-establishing pilot and the dreamy and nightmarish third episode with the Tibetan rock toss and the dancing, backwards-talking dwarf in the Red Room. In 1990, Lynch and his fellow creator, writer and producer Mark Frost, premiered their show about the death of a small-town high school girl named Laura Palmer. The first season of episodes was unforgettable. The second season, with Lynch mostly off making movies, was much more incoherent and unsatisfying, but it still had moments, scenes and subplots that stood out from everything else on TV. A quarter of a century later, the original Twin Peaks is still being imitated. In all that time, the closest TV has come to the original is the just-concluded first season of FX's Legion , by gifted TV producer Noah Hawley.'Twin Peaks' Makes A Moody And Eccentric Return To TVhttp://kvpr.org/post/twin-peaks-makes-moody-and-eccentric-return-tv
77588 as http://kvpr.orgMon, 22 May 2017 17:29:00 +0000'Twin Peaks' Makes A Moody And Eccentric Return To TVDavid BianculliOn Friday, two different streaming services present the first seasons of new drama series. Both are based on novels written by women, both have female characters squarely at their center — and both come to TV with accomplished women producers overseeing their adaptations. One of them, on Amazon, is a fairly modern story, with Jill Soloway , the creator of Amazon's groundbreaking Transparent , adapting Chris Kraus' provocatively titled 1997 novel, I Love Dick. The other, a Netflix co-production with the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation, is a new, somewhat less glossy version of a children's classic. Moira Walley-Beckett , an Emmy-winning writer-producer from the Breaking Bad team, adapts the long-cherished 1908 Lucy Maud Montgomery novel, Anne of Green Gables . Set a century apart, these two different stories, and two different TV series, actually have a lot in common. Both are adapted in creative and exciting ways. Both are exceptionally good at getting into the heads of their mainStreaming Services Put Female Characters At The Center With 'Anne' And 'Dick'http://kvpr.org/post/streaming-services-put-female-characters-center-anne-and-dick
77183 as http://kvpr.orgFri, 12 May 2017 18:26:00 +0000Streaming Services Put Female Characters At The Center With 'Anne' And 'Dick'David BianculliCopyright 2017 Fresh Air. To see more, visit Fresh Air . TERRY GROSS, HOST: This is FRESH AIR. When filmmaker Jonathan Demme died April 26, our TV critic David Bianculli was reminded of one of Demme's earliest works that was made for television. Like other vintage TV productions that have become forgotten or hard to find, David says this one deserves to be remembered and watched. DAVID BIANCULLI, BYLINE: Salutes to Jonathan Demme right after his death recently at age 73 prominently and rightly featured his biggest movie successes and triumphs - "Silence Of The Lambs," "Philadelphia," "Married To The Mob," "Stop Making Sense," "Something Wild." But almost no one celebrating his life and works mentioned an early effort directed for television that I consider among his very best work. It was an hour-long comedy drama made in 1982 for the inaugural season of a brilliant new PBS anthology series called "American Playhouse." It was based on a short story by Kurt Vonnegut. Its title was "WhoA Salute To Filmmaker Jonathan Demme's Early TV Work http://kvpr.org/post/salute-filmmaker-jonathan-demmes-early-tv-work
76818 as http://kvpr.orgWed, 03 May 2017 18:20:00 +0000A Salute To Filmmaker Jonathan Demme's Early TV Work David BianculliCopyright 2017 Fresh Air. To see more, visit Fresh Air . TERRY GROSS, HOST: This is FRESH AIR. Tonight, the Hulu streaming service premieres a new adaptation of "The Handmaid's Tale," the 1986 novel by Margaret Atwood. Her futuristic story, in which women are denied rights and freedoms and the most fertile of them treated as breeding stock, is now a 10-part miniseries starring Elisabeth Moss, who played Peggy Olson on "Mad Men." Our TV critic David Bianculli has this review. DAVID BIANCULLI, BYLINE: "The Handmaid's Tale" arrives on Hulu already riding a wave of controversy - with several people involved in the production, some producers and even some stars, denying that this new miniseries adaptation is either a frightening feminist narrative or a timely political commentary. Of course it is. And those aspects, especially the swift and aggressively hostile erosion of women's rights and status, are what make "The Handmaid's Tale" so haunting. Margaret Atwood wrote her futuristic novelHulu's 'Handmaid's Tale' Delivers A Timely And Feminist Messagehttp://kvpr.org/post/hulus-handmaids-tale-delivers-timely-and-feminist-message
76538 as http://kvpr.orgWed, 26 Apr 2017 18:06:00 +0000Hulu's 'Handmaid's Tale' Delivers A Timely And Feminist MessageDavid BianculliThe 1996 Coen Brothers movie Fargo was so good, and so original, that when the FX cable network announced it was making a new version for television, I expected it to be awful — especially since the creator of the adaptation was Noah Hawley, a writer-producer who hadn't really done much. But Hawley's Fargo wasn't a straight remake — it was a sly and fond salute, capturing the mood and spirit of the original movie without borrowing any of its specific plots or characters. Billy Bob Thornton starred as a malevolent hit man and Martin Freeman was the quiet Midwesterner caught in his web. That Fargo miniseries wasn't just good. It was great. So when Hawley and FX decided to reboot, start from scratch, and do a second season of Fargo with new actors and characters, once again, I wasn't expecting much. After all, I'd seen season two of HBO's True Detective , which proved how hard it was to get lightning to strike twice. But season two of Fargo , with Jean Smart and Ted Danson among its many'Fargo' And Bill Nye Make Promising Returns To The Small Screenhttp://kvpr.org/post/fargo-and-bill-nye-make-promising-returns-small-screen
76255 as http://kvpr.orgWed, 19 Apr 2017 17:40:00 +0000'Fargo' And Bill Nye Make Promising Returns To The Small ScreenDavid BianculliYou don't need to know all about Breaking Bad , and the meth-making, drug-dealing former schoolteacher Walter White, played by Bryan Cranston , to enjoy Better Call Saul. This spinoff series more than stands on its own — and, as TV spinoffs go, is the best in the business since Cheers begat Frasier . Come to think of it, it's even reinvented and refreshed its story line the same way the sitcom Frasier did — by giving the main character a brother, and making sibling rivalry and similar occupational interests a key to the new show's central dynamic. In Frasier , Kelsey Grammer, as Frasier Crane, was given the gift of David Hyde Pierce, who played his high-strung younger brother Niles, a fellow psychologist. In Better Call Saul, Bob Odenkirk , as Jimmy McGill, is given the gift of Michael McKean , playing the even higher-strung older brother Chuck, a fellow lawyer. This addition to, and expansion of, the Breaking Bad canon has been one of its great triumphs — and one of its best secret'Better Call Saul' Launches Its 3rd Season, Still The Best Drama Series On TVhttp://kvpr.org/post/better-call-saul-launches-its-3rd-season-still-best-drama-series-tv
75901 as http://kvpr.orgMon, 10 Apr 2017 17:41:00 +0000'Better Call Saul' Launches Its 3rd Season, Still The Best Drama Series On TVDavid BianculliOn Friday, the streaming service Netflix unveils the entire first season — all 13 episodes — of its newest children's series, called Julie's Greenroom. It stars Julie Andrews, who also is its executive producer along with her daughter, children's book author Emma Walton Hamilton . Another collaborator is Lisa Henson, daughter of the late Muppets creator Jim Henson , whose Jim Henson's Creature Shop provides the puppet characters with whom Andrews interacts. These include a dog, a duck and five little kids — children, not goats. With help from weekly celebrity guests, Andrews guides them in how to stage a musical. This first season of Julie's Greenroom is actually a miniseries with a continuing narrative. It tells the story, from start to finish, of the creation, development and presentation of an original musical. Even though she has a human stage manager to help, Andrews is there to run things and to provide a dose of sanity amid all the backstage craziness and enthusiasm — the sameJulie Andrews Teams Up With Henson Puppets In Netflix's 'Greenroom'http://kvpr.org/post/julie-andrews-teams-henson-puppets-netflixs-greenroom
74981 as http://kvpr.orgFri, 17 Mar 2017 19:25:00 +0000Julie Andrews Teams Up With Henson Puppets In Netflix's 'Greenroom'David BianculliLast week, when news surfaced about various meetings between the Russian ambassador and members of Donald Trump's campaign, Huffington Post editor Howard Fineman appeared on MSNBC and said, "If you think the Russian ambassador is just an ambassador, you haven't been watching The Americans." Well, I have been watching — and it's been fascinating from the start. But now, with Cold War intrigue hotter than it's been in decades, many curious new viewers are likely to flock to this series. At first, they may be quite surprised, because The Americans, more than anything else, is a family drama, in which the parents just happen to be Russian spies living in the Virginia suburbs of Washington, DC. The husband and wife, Elizabeth and Philip Jennings, were paired by mother Russia long ago to emigrate to the United States and have a couple of kids and run a small travel agency, while taking on serious and sometimes dangerous spy missions. Their kids are now teens, and their daughter Paige is oldCold War Spy Series 'The Americans' Taps Into Today's Concerns About Russiahttp://kvpr.org/post/cold-war-spy-series-americans-taps-todays-concerns-about-russia
74597 as http://kvpr.orgTue, 07 Mar 2017 19:16:00 +0000Cold War Spy Series 'The Americans' Taps Into Today's Concerns About RussiaDavid BianculliAs horror movies go, 1962's What Ever Happened to Baby Jane? was a B movie, in budget and, if I gave it one, a letter grade. It didn't deserve an A for its scares or its innovation, as Alfred Hitchcock's Psycho did two years earlier, or his movie The Birds would in the following year. But there was something about Baby Jane, with its story of two actress sisters — one confined to a wheelchair, the other obsessed by memories of her glory days as a child star — that was truly, deeply creepy. The director, Robert Aldrich, who had come up from live TV, was good, but was no Hitchcock: the movie didn't belong to him. It belonged, completely, to Joan Crawford as the invalid Blanche, and especially to Bette Davis as the sadistic Baby Jane. Why make a miniseries out of the making of this particular cult motion picture? Ryan Murphy jump-started the current craze of miniseries anthologies, with new stories and characters being presented each season, with American Horror Story , and he's had even'Bette And Joan' Reveals The Electric Personalities Behind 'Baby Jane'http://kvpr.org/post/bette-and-joan-reveals-electric-personalities-behind-baby-jane
74472 as http://kvpr.orgFri, 03 Mar 2017 18:31:00 +0000'Bette And Joan' Reveals The Electric Personalities Behind 'Baby Jane'David BianculliBig Little Lies, which begins Sunday on HBO, is a miniseries that begins with a murder scene, and investigation, in the close-knit oceanside town of Monterey. It's a seven-episode drama, and HBO made the first six available for preview. Even after watching all of them, I still don't know the identity of the murderer — or, for that matter, the victim. But that's on purpose. Based on the novel by Liane Moriarty , Big Little Lies is a study in motivation, conflict and, most of all, secrets. You watch this miniseries to actively identify the potential killer, and the person most likely to be murdered — and the more Big Little Lies plays out, the more you realize they could be anyone. Two of this drama's stars, Reese Witherspoon and Nicole Kidman, also rank among its executive producers, and have found themselves some especially deep and challenging roles to play. Witherspoon is Madeline, a super-involved, super-intense mom, and Kidman is Celeste, whose seemingly storybook marriage to theNew Dramas 'Good Fight' And 'Big Little Lies' Make A Case For Subscription TVhttp://kvpr.org/post/new-dramas-good-fight-and-big-little-lies-make-case-subscription-tv
73948 as http://kvpr.orgFri, 17 Feb 2017 20:03:00 +0000New Dramas 'Good Fight' And 'Big Little Lies' Make A Case For Subscription TVDavid Biancullihttps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rYYCiaHhnx4 Tom and Dick Smothers came to CBS in 1967 not really intending to lead or support a revolution. They just got caught up in it — and they happened to have a network program, with some 30 million viewers, on which they criticized the war in Vietnam, celebrated rock 'n' roll music and satirized politics and politicians. The Smothers Brothers Comedy Hour, which premiered 50 years ago this week, got its message out slowly and sometimes sneakily at first. A lot of it came through the music and the hot new acts booked to perform on air. Over the run of the show, it was like a series of anthems from the counterculture — from Buffalo Springfield singing "For What It's Worth" to the Beatles singing "Revolution" — with the American TV debut of The Who, and the West Coast cast of Hair, and Dion singing a song about assassinated heroes in between. The Beatles didn't appear live to sing "Hey Jude" and "Revolution." They'd gotten disinterested in touring by50 Years Later, The Biting Satire Of 'The Smothers Brothers' Still Resonateshttp://kvpr.org/post/50-years-later-biting-satire-smothers-brothers-still-resonates
73678 as http://kvpr.orgFri, 10 Feb 2017 19:42:00 +000050 Years Later, The Biting Satire Of 'The Smothers Brothers' Still ResonatesDavid BianculliThere are two things viewers should know right from the start about Legion , which premieres Wednesday night on FX. One is that it doesn't look, or feel, like a drama based on a comic book — it's more like a next-generation version of One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest , as filtered through H.P. Lovecraft or Edgar Allan Poe. The other is that it comes from Noah Hawley, who managed to take an already great movie — the Coen Brothers' Fargo — and use it as inspiration for a couple of equally terrific Fargo miniseries. Hawley's TV versions of Fargo are all about character and acting, and plot twists, and deliciously rich visuals. The same is true of Legion — especially about the visuals. Now that I think of it, that's the third thing you need to know about Legion in advance: You have to watch it. I mean, really watch it. No multi-tasking. I don't think I've ever seen a TV series that demands you watch it more attentively — or rewards that effort quite as much. Images come so fast and'Legion' Is A Fun, Fast-Paced TV Adaptation Of The Marvel Comichttp://kvpr.org/post/legion-fun-fast-paced-tv-adaptation-marvel-comic
73515 as http://kvpr.orgTue, 07 Feb 2017 18:30:00 +0000'Legion' Is A Fun, Fast-Paced TV Adaptation Of The Marvel ComicDavid BianculliI don't want to oversell this new version of A Series of Unfortunate Events, but I don't know how not to. Everything that the movie version got wrong, this TV adaptation gets right. And not just right, but brilliantly. The difference is as stark, and as significant, as the difference between the movie and TV versions of Buffy the Vampire Slayer -- where the writer of that story, Joss Whedon, took the reins and made a television version much truer to his original vision. Daniel Handler, who wrote the original series of Lemony Snicket books, has done the same thing here. And he's enlisted, as his key co-conspirators, two pitch-perfect collaborators: Barry Sonnenfeld, of Pushing Daisies and The Addams Family fame, as the director of many of the episodes, and an executive producer. And as another producer, and the show's central star, Neil Patrick Harris. This new 8-episode Netflix version, which is written by Handler, is inspiringly faithful to the original books, with two episodes'Series Of Unfortunate Events' On Netflix Will Charm And Delighthttp://kvpr.org/post/series-unfortunate-events-netflix-will-charm-and-delight
72646 as http://kvpr.orgFri, 13 Jan 2017 18:53:00 +0000'Series Of Unfortunate Events' On Netflix Will Charm And DelightDavid BianculliTV critic David Bianculli says that 2016 wasn't a great year for broadcast TV — but that's OK, because audiences had a lot of streaming, cable and Web options to make up for it. "The things we're getting out of Amazon and out of Netflix and out of Hulu, it's increasing our options and they're trying some pretty good stuff," Bianculli tells Fresh Air 's Terry Gross. Bianculli notes that mini-series and anthology shows are expanding the types of stories that can be told on the small screen. "U.S. television is ... adopting the British model more aggressively and doing shorter things that are self-contained, and the benefits to this are huge," he says. Looking ahead, Bianculli is optimistic about the future of TV. "There's always a lot going on," he says. As for this year, here are Bianculli's picks for the best TV of 2016. You can click each list item below to learn more about the show. 1. Better Call Saul (AMC) 2. Black Mirror (Netflix) 3. The Night Of (HBO) Tied for 4 and 5: The People'A Lot Going On': Critic David Bianculli Picks The Best TV Of 2016http://kvpr.org/post/lot-going-critic-david-bianculli-picks-best-tv-2016
71885 as http://kvpr.orgThu, 22 Dec 2016 18:47:00 +0000'A Lot Going On': Critic David Bianculli Picks The Best TV Of 2016David BianculliThe Rocky Horror Show began as a stage musical in London in the early 1970s, starring Tim Curry as the outrageously dressed outer-space alien Frank N. Furter, self-described as a "sweet transvestite from Transsexual, Transylvania." Richard O'Brien, the composer of the play and its music, played Frank's hunchbacked assistant, Riff Raff — and the two of them repeated their roles in a 1975 movie, The Rocky Horror Picture Show. The film flopped, originally, but got new life in midnight shows across the country. Before long, fans were attending in costume, bringing props, shouting interactive lines at the screen, and generally embracing the film's central, sexually and socially adventurous theme of "Don't dream it, be it." For such an irreverent musical, this new TV remake on the Fox network is surprisingly faithful to its source material. It finds a way, at various spots, to incorporate the audience-participation elements, by occasionally showing a theater "audience" seeing the same movieCult TV Fans Will Find 'Rocky Horror' And 'Black Mirror' Smart And Provocativehttp://kvpr.org/post/cult-tv-fans-will-find-rocky-horror-and-black-mirror-smart-and-provocative
69604 as http://kvpr.orgThu, 20 Oct 2016 17:56:00 +0000Cult TV Fans Will Find 'Rocky Horror' And 'Black Mirror' Smart And ProvocativeDavid BianculliRemember that meteorite that smashed into Russia a few years ago, with enough people filming it as it came to Earth to cause a brief Internet sensation? Robert and Michelle King certainly do. The creators of The Good Wife use some of those images in the opening moments of their new CBS series, BrainDead, to set up a bizarre but very enjoyable hypothetical scenario. Here's the weird what-if: What if a meteorite like that one is recovered by Russians and forwarded to the United States for further study and eventual display in the Smithsonian? And what if that happens right at the start of a government shutdown, allowing the outer-space rock to burst open undetected, spilling out a veritable army of ant-like space bugs? And what if those bugs have the power, and the inclination, to creep around inside the Beltway and into the ears of politicians and their staffers, eating and mutating their brains? And what if those brain mutations result in politicians who are partisan in the extreme —Aliens Attack And Congress Goes Extreme In CBS' Political Satire 'BrainDead'http://kvpr.org/post/aliens-attack-and-congress-goes-extreme-cbs-political-satire-braindead
64545 as http://kvpr.orgMon, 13 Jun 2016 17:57:00 +0000Aliens Attack And Congress Goes Extreme In CBS' Political Satire 'BrainDead'